Swensen Lecture
World’s leading higher education money manager to speak at the Institute for Philanthropy
31st October, 2006
Professor David Swensen, the Chief Investment Officer of Yale University, is in the words of Time Magazine “easily the best money manager in higher education. He may be the best, period.” On Wednesday 1 November 2006, he will deliver a lecture at the Institute for Philanthropy on the subject of “Managing the financial assets of not-for-profit organisations”. The event, sponsored by SVG Capital plc, has been rescheduled from its original date of Wednesday 21 June 2006; it will be attended by over a hundred key figures in academia, journalism, and the public, private and charity sectors. Nick Ferguson, the Institute’s chairman, said that:
“David Swensen has brought a rigorous analytical approach to this area, and has introduced methods of asset management that both reduce volatility and improve returns for non-profit organisations.”
Noting the timeliness of the seminar, the Institute’s chief executive Dr. Salvatore LaSpada commented that:
“Whilst we in Britain are on a strong drive to increase the flow of new philanthropic money into the sector, we would be remiss if we did not also consider how to grow those assets already held by charities, universities and other institutions. David Swensen is a visionary in this area and we are delighted to welcome him.”
Having completed his doctorate in economics at Yale under the close guidance of the late James Tobin, a Nobel laureate, Professor Swensen worked on Wall Street for six years, during which time he was senior vice president of Lehman Brothers. In 1985 he then returned to Yale, where, aided by a small team of fellow former graduates, he devised an investment strategy that was without precedent. He developed a portfolio that was based primarily in private equity and real estate, steering largely clear of bonds, hedge funds and publicly traded equity markets even when they were at their sustained peak. As a result, he now presides over an institutional fund that for over two decades has comfortably outperformed the index of America’s 500 largest companies. He is also the author of two critically acclaimed books, Pioneering Portfolio Management: An Unconventional Approach to Institutional Investment (The Free Press, 2000) and Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment (The Free Press, 2005). During his twenty-one year tenure as Yale’s Chief Investment Officer, the university has seen its endowment grow more than ten times, with a compound return of 16% per annum over that period. Its value currently stands in excess of $18 billion, and it supplies one third of Yale’s annual budget.
About SVG Capital
SVG Capital plc is a private equity investor and fund management business listed on the London Stock Exchange. Since listing in May 1996, SVG Capital has reported compound net asset growth per share of 13.8% p.a., a 9.2% out-performance of the FTSE All-Share. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, SVG Advisers, SVG Capital provides innovative structures for investing across the private equity market and in public equity using private equity techniques. The combined assets and commitments of SVG Capital and SVG Advisers are €7.7 billion.
Join the Institute for Philanthropy mailing list for our latest news...
